Ash Wednesday

Snippets of Ash Wednesday

He watched her nearly five minutes frozen and dumbfounded, with his jaunt arms dangling uselessly by his side. With a deep breath, he collapsed into a nearby chair, never taking his eyes off her. It would be over soon; there was nothing he could do to help her. There was never anything he could do to help her. Yet, he felt obligated to watch. He lit a cigarette and exhaled slowly. Scanning the dim room, he found the spoon on the nightstand to her right. She was still breathing and eerily still; her eyes closed and her body languidly splayed across the patchwork comforter. He moved quickly to retrieve the blackened utensil and plopped back down in his seat. Fixing a shot, he was thankful she sent him out to get more. He didn’t see the need for the extra trip then, but she had the money and insisted. He was only gone for a half hour. “There is no way I would know what she took” he reassured himself. “There was no way I could have saved her”. The nightstand was littered with lottery ticket wrappers, an empty dust covered mirror, and a bottle of pills he hadn’t seen before. No label.
After a minute of rooting around callous and collapsed veins in his forearm, he found the sweet spot and pulled back on the plunger. Blood rushed up into the syringe mixing with the tar-colored medicine and with one push, warmth spread through his body. Licking the blood from his arm, he leaned back in the itchy refurbished chair and stared at the bed. She was dead. He felt nothing, but that was to be expected. That was the point.